Reflective Essay: ExxonMobil's Performance and Strategy

This reflective essay provides an overview of ExxonMobil, a leading global company in the oil and gas industry, examining its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). It analyzes ExxonMobil's strong financial performance, high asset base, and brand recognition, which contribute to its objective of maximizing shareholder wealth. The essay explores how the company operates within the macro-environment, including political, economic, social, technological, legal, and ecological factors, and how these factors impact its operations and strategic decisions. Furthermore, it discusses the company's competitive landscape, customer base, and corporate social responsibility initiatives. The essay also highlights weaknesses such as legal challenges and opportunities like market growth and investment in technology. In conclusion, the essay suggests that ExxonMobil is on track to achieve its mission, emphasizing the importance of leveraging strengths, mitigating weaknesses, capitalizing on opportunities, and developing contingency plans to address potential threats.

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Running head: Reflective essay
Reflective essay
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Refective essay
ExxonMobil is one of the most successful companies around the world. It has a
strong financial performance as well as a strong asset base value. The company
operates on the global market and thus poised to be impacted both positively and
negatively by macro-environment factors.
In the oil and gas industry, it is one of the leading companies. However, it faces
stiff competition from other companies, namely Royal Dutch shell from Holland,
BP, Chevron Corp, Total and ConocoPhillips. These competitors make part of the
company’s social environment. They influence how it conducts its operations in
issues such as prices of products and services, quality of the products and
services, corporate image among other activities.
The company has also a large base of customers. Such a high customer base
influences the company’s operations such that it will always strive to meet the
customers’ needs by ensuring they are satisfied by their products and services.
The customers are elastic and thus any slight notice of goods that don’t meet
quality would make them shift to the competitors’ product and services.
The general objective of the company is to become the premier petroleum and
petrochemical company in the world. The company’s strengths such as strong
financial performance, a high asset base value and a strong brand is helping it in
accomplishing this goal. All of these strengths are correlated with macro
environment factors such as economic, technological, and social environment.
The company aims to operate within a macro-environment factors that will ensure
it achieves its objective of maximizing shareholders wealth. The political,

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economic environment, social, technological, legal and ecological environment
must all impact positively to the company in order to achieve. For instance, the
company should employ technological means that seek to maximize productivity
at minimum costs. This alternately increases the company’s profit and thus the
shareholders’ wealth.
The political environment should be in such a way that the policies by the federal
government encourage enterprise. The government should be seeking to help the
companies grow beyond domestic borders.
The community is one of the micro factors that affect the operations of the
company. The company seeks to be a leader in corporate social responsibility. To
do so, it runs community based projects within communities where its operations
are located. This is co-related to the social macro environment.
Another aspect of macro environment environment correlated to the external
environment is the ecological environment. Since the company operates in a line
of business that has a high susceptibility to environmental hazards, the company
has operations that seek to be extra- cautious on how it does its operations in
order to avoid environmental hazards.
Although the company is one of the best operating companies globally, it faces
some weaknesses. One major weakness that threatens to impede the company’s
performance is the law suits it faces. Such law suits that emanate from issues of
fraud, environmental pollution cost the company a lot of cash in terms of legal

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fees. It also threatens the company’s reputation in its quest to becoming a premier
company in the oil and gas sector.
The company also has some opportunities that remain unharnessed. The use of
petroleum and petrochemical products is growing steadily. This guarantees the
company of a growing market and thus opportunity to increase the production
capacity to meet the ever increasing demand.
The other opportunity is investment. First, the company has enough resources to
invest in top of the range machineries that will guarantee an increase of the firm’s
productivity. It also has an effective Research and Development department that
has the capacity to research on new ways of exploration of oil and gas and also
develop and design machines that work better than other existing ones. All these
will increase the company’s productivity.
Conclusively, the company is on the right track on the road to achieving its
mission statement. The management should just take advantage of the company’s
strength, lessen the impact of the weaknesses, use the opportunities and create
contingency plans to avoid the threats.